High Degree of Randomness

I've played Shadows of Brimstone 5 times now: twice at demos with the publishers, and three times at home.

I'm enjoying the game significantly. The randomness is high, but it provides a good variety of play experience. You never know what you're going to get.

We completed our mission at both of the demos with FFP really easily, so much so that I was mildly worried the game was too easy...

Since getting it home, we've lost three missions in a row. So, "too easy" is not such a concern now.

Cross-Posted at BGG 

If this is sounding familiar, it's probably because I adapted this from something I wrote on the forums at Board Game Geek. This version is longer, and includes some analysis I hadn't done there, but it also skips a bunch of TPK detail that here I could just replace with a link to a blog post from a couple days ago. This is the better version of the post, but if you've already read the BGG version recently, you may find this to be mostly redundant.

Two of our three losses were TPKs caused by chains of Threat cards. I gave a thorough example in a previous post. The other TPK wasn't quite as ridiculous as it was only a 2-player game, but similar in theme.

The third mission was lost by Darkness meter and the villain escaping. The corridors and exploration tokens pwned us. Despite thorough shuffling, we got 8 corridors in our first 10 map cards. (Each boxed set comes with 6, so a total of 12 of the 48 mine cards are corridors. 8 in a row wasn't even possible if playing from a single boxed set, and the odds of it with 2 boxed sets aren't exactly high.) This pushed us to the deep end of the track where Holding Back the Darkness is really hard. We continued on, but now the Exploration tokens conspired against us, and delivered all 7 of the tokens that don't have Clues before we could get the third (of 5) clued token. Game ended with villain escape despite us having handled all the fights really well and done everything "right". We wasted no time, but still lost on the timer.

These losses were of course all flukes, and won't be indicative of overall play experience across dozens of games... but it's still kind of awesome (or frustrating, if that's how you choose to look at it) to know that such losses are lurking in the cards. Even a well-equipped high-level party will still lose to the Darkness meter from time to time.

Despite the shocking upsets, I still feel that the randomness is a benefit. It's surprisingly fun to get curb-stomped by a cooperative game when you thought you'd won.

Contrasting with Myth:
We took a break from Myth because it was getting too repetitive, and just too easy. There were only two or three monster types that you'd see again and again, and our characters had earned titles and got good gear. Brimstone seems likely to avoid those problems because it has more encounter variety and built-in methods to upgrade the badguys and challenges as you level up. Also, there's more PCs to choose from in Brimstone (assuming you have both boxed sets), and each PC has more customization options out of the gate. If Brimstone starts to grow stale, swapping characters should actually freshen it up again.

In theory, Myth is finally actually shipping wave 2 to the US now, which may even it out until Shadows' second wave many months from now. If I can tear myself away from Brimstone long enough to find out, I'll post my observations here.

My expectation, though, is that the clarity of the rules and card phrasing in Brimstone will push it over the top in any comparison to Myth. There are parts of Myth I do like better (the action decks are fun but clunky, the monster AI is more varied, and the two-stage bosses are cool nod to videogaming), but Brimstone's far gentler learning curve, and dramatically fewer rules-holes is thus-far making it feel like the superior game. 

Little Annoyances:

Which is not to say that Shadows of Brimstone is without flaw entirely.

I do find it a little annoying to track XP during combat in Brimstone. I would have been happier if the xp per hit and per wound on the big guys had been more standardized and tracked with tokens or something that would have sped it up during the most complex of the combat rounds. It's not bad, but it could have been better. It's also not as bad as it had been, because in earlier drafts the XP per wound on large monsters was variable by monster type.

I also think that the high-Initiative characters are going to pull ahead in the XP long haul, and that might prove problematic. In yesterday's game the Saloon Girl asked me to give her my last dynamite so she could throw it before the monsters got to act, and it kinda sucked to be giving her a 100 xp worth of potential kills when she was already the only person to level up that session.  If your group includes anyone prone to jealousy or being a sore loser, I'd recommend rotating out characters frequently (so that you get a different party mix and can share the spotlight moments around the table from game to game), or splitting XP evenly (but that will increase the amount of math during fights, and as I mentioned above, I already find the XP tracking a little tedious). I haven't played enough, or leveled-up enough, to know if this problem self-corrects or not.

I do know that this problem is less pronounced than it was at the time of that first demo many months ago. At the time I complained to Jason Hill that I felt my character (the Gunslinger) was too good, because of the way Quickdraw interacted with Dual-Wielding and his high Initiative. Since that time, the Dual-Wield penalty has been rewritten to be more severe (it used to apply to only your off-hand shots, not all of them), the Quickdraw card gained a restriction that it can't be used when Dual-Wielding, and the XP numbers were tweaked in a way that rewards hits instead of wounds (so you can still get a decent amount of XP if you are shooting at a monster that only has 1 wound left).

On a related note, I don't quite understand why low-Initiative characters lose their activation if the last monster dies before they move. Restarting at the top of the round only makes it more likely that the high-Initiative PCs will get the scavenge rewards. This seems an unnecessary bit of insult-to-injury, even if they do get some manner of compensation during the Catch Your Breath step.

Things I Love

The combat system is solid, and the handfulls of dice are fun. The components are beautiful, and the tile system rocks. Variety of play experience is high, thanks to 18 missions, tons of cards, customized PCs, and lots of random events. As mentioned above, the game can turn difficult with a single bad roll or draw, which is a good thing in a cooperative game. The XP system solves the problem of being the party healer - you score a lot of experience patching up the other characters.

I really appreciate the Traveling and Frontier Town portion(s) of the game. While some folks are probably going to complain that the game inserts random rolls into everything, I find that the risk of events really spices up what would otherwise be another boring min-max shopping trip. I _hate_ those "stop and ponder the equipment list" moments in traditional RPGs, but in Brimstone shopping is actually fun.

House rule caveat: 

When we play, we don't let you buy things for other people. Doing so (there's no clear official rule against it, but the rules seem to vaguely imply you can't) would allow a 6-player posse to hit every location on the first day, and that's just not as much fun as pushing your luck on multi-day town stays. 

And really: Outlaws, Bandidos, Saloon Girls and Gunslingers probably shouldn't be trusting one another with their wallets.

The level-up system is kinda fun, too. You get one random (rolled on a chart) stat boost each level, and then you get to pick a cool power to go with it. This gives you control of the important parts of your character (choosing your new trick) but the random chart makes it harder to min-max. In most level-up systems, the players who've mastered the system (at least to the extent of having identified dump stats and exploitable interactions) have a huge advantage over casual players that haven't done as much analysis. In theory the random stat boost should even this out a bit. It won't perfectly balance things if one person is making poor choices while the other carefully weighs the options, but it should at least reduce the gap. I'm excited to see to what extent that holds true over the long haul, as we've had such bad luck that only 2 characters have leveled up in 5 games (though to be fair, that's also because I've played a different character in each game to get a taste of everything). Worst case scenario: the casual player gets unlucky rolls for stats with no synergy, and the min-maxer rolls exactly what they wanted. While that sounds bad, it's actually basically the default assumption/starting point of most other games.  Worst case is essentially breaking even, and it's still providing at least a small extra hurdle for the shameless min-maxer to have to work around. I feel like that's a step in the right direction.

TPK’d in Brimstone

We got our chaps-wearing butts handed to us when we played Shadows of Brimstone on Friday night. We had four PCs (gunslinger, preacher, lawman and an indian scout) so we our threat difficulty was Medium.

The first couple mine cards we drew were just corridors, so we were all getting a little antsy by the time the first room showed up, so we weren’t coordinating our movement very well. The preacher rushes ahead into the new room, leaving my gunslinger around a blind corner. I considered asking him not to do that, but I figured it was our first room and we were all at full health and equipment, so what could go wrong?

The exploration token called for an Attack, so that’s one Medium Threat. The room had an Advanced box on the mine card, calling for an extra Encounter card. Long story short… The Encounter card added a High Threat to the fight. The High Threat was itself "Draw Two Medium Threats", one of which was "Draw Two Low Threats". On round two we failed to Hold Back The Darkness, and the card added another Medium Threat to the fight. Thus our very first battle of the campaign was against 3 Elite (+2 damage) Night Terrors, plus 1 Slasher, 6 Void Spiders and 6 Hellbats. All appearing in a large room around the corner where my gunslinger special ability to get free shots at spawning monsters couldn’t draw line of sight.

TPK in the first room. Technically, they left us for dead, and wandered off to destroy half of the frontier town.  We fought to the bitter end, and when finally the Lawmen fell, there were only two monsters left (the Slasher and the last Night Terror) both of whom were badly wounded. Those of us who didn’t go down the first round scored a lot of XP, but not enough to level up. So we survived, but with a permanent wound or two, hardly any treasure, and very limited options for stocking up before our next mission. We’re off to a great start on the campaign.

I’d actually been a tiny-bit worried prior to this that the game might not be dangerous enough. The two demos we’d played with FFP had been mostly cakewalks (especially the more recent one). Fun cakewalks, to be sure, but not exactly close calls. Instead, I see now that the full game starts in the sweet spot where one wrong move (or unlucky card draw) can smash your face, but actual “gone forever” character death is rare. (They may have stacked the decks and/or exploration tokens at the demos, to specifically encourage the cakewalking. I don't know.) Given the way the Elite and Brutal system automatically scales up the monsters as you advance in character level, I think it’s going to sustain the tension into the later stages of the campaign. I’m very excited to play more again real soon.

Rocks Fall, Everybody Zombies

I'm normally a very good GM, but on a couple of my recent sessions I really dropped the ball. Sometimes it happens to even the best of us.

Basically, I wrote a set of Zombie RPG rules, and they didn't work. I still think they would work reasonably well for what they're intended to do, but that wasn't what my players were interested in. They wanted to get the heck out of dodge, whereas my rules naively assumed they'd stay in densely populated areas that would turn into an undead wasteland over time.  I had chapters devoted to sieges and supply hunts, two scenarios my players did everything in their power to avoid. (And seriously, can you blame them?) They stocked up early before things got really bad, and headed out of town.


As it turns out, there's no such thing as a supply shortage during a zombie outbreak. Supply shortages like you see after a hurricane or other disaster are a function of a break down in supply lines without a corresponding significant decrease in consumption. Unless your zombies are eating canned goods, there's no shortages. Though malnutrition would eventually play a factor with a diet so restricted, any of us could survive for a very long time on a couple of cans of beans a day with no immediate ill effects. Next time you're in a grocery store, attempt to count just the canned beans in one aisle of the store. Thousands of cans.  Either survivors are rare and thus any given grocery store is several years of food for the party, or the infection rate is low and the PCs can readily avoid the zombies. Neither results in particularly tense and exciting sessions, and while everyone else seemed to be having fun, I felt my pacing was dreadful.

There was a point where I probably should have stymied their efforts to leave town, for the sake of the narrative. If I'd kept them in town, where the zombies were, I could have kept the game sharp. However, the rules I was using were intentionally very light, and assumed a strong level of PC competency, so there wasn't a particularly good way to provide an obstacle to the players that they wouldn't have a very high likelihood of getting past... at least not that early in the timeline. And since I wrote the rules, I didn't want to just hand-wave the obstacle, lest the it be perceived that my rules were intentionally light specifically to allow for unfair GM fiat.

Some time after the PCs got out of town, after many more sessions of pacing that I felt was wretched, I essentially decided to end the campaign... but I didn't decide to do so in a reasonable way, or at a decent time. I just kinda got frustrated during the final scene of a random session where they'd once again dodged a particularly slow-moving offscreen bullet. In my frustration, I had an NPC go psycho and sabotage their car. No build-up, no foreshadowing, not even a die-roll to blame it on, just pretty much "so, that psycho guy cut your break line and now you're hurtling down the hill."

I told myself I wasn't ending the campaign, I was just creating a good cliff-hanger and making the game exciting for once. What a crock. It was abrupt and unfair, and I'm lucky I didn't lose my GMing badge over it.

My players looked at the situation, and politely said "well, I think that's about enough of this campaign." And what could I do but agree. Your GM's a dick, and a hack. The very sense of engineered unfairness that I'd carefully steered clear of 5 or 6 sessions earlier, now returned with a vengeance.

I hope I haven't burned any bridges or good will there, because that bizarre turn of events was very abnormal for me. I like a good tragic ending, but this wasn't a good one, and it wasn't planned or prepared for in any way.  Nobody left angry (that I'm aware of), but it was a rather pathetic thing for me to do as GM. Sorry I let you down, folks.

TROOPS: Cloud City

Last night I ran a one-shot based on the cool old Star Wars fan-film TROOPS. This was the second time I'd run such a game, but the last time was way back in February of 2009.  For last night's reprisal, I moved the game from Tatooine to Bespin. Filmed live on the platforms of Cloud City.

Here's a link to my post about the old game.  For those unfamiliar with the general TROOPS concept, here's a link to the very entertaining video that inspired this madness.

We used the classic d6 system, with the PCs assembled quick and easy via the game's template system. The PCs were mostly Stormtroopers, plus one contract Bounty Hunter (an Ewok of all things) and a probe droid operating as embedded journalist / camera crew. Surprisingly likeable PC Stormtroopers, as in the video, with completely dysfunctional shady NPCs. "All NPCs are Guilty - Otherwise they wouldn't be NPCs." A few of the PCs were reprised from the other scenario two years ago, but any who got promoted had since been busted back down to no more than junior officer status so it would still feel like TROOPS.

This time I ran them through the background events of the last third of Empire Strikes Back, explaining why the 'Falcon's hyperdrive is deactivated, how C-3PO got shot, and what kind of trouble you can get into when someone's severed hand lands on your back porch.

At the start of every scene, I handed a random PC a short written script. This was their narrative monologue to the camera, used to set up and lead in to the next scene, and establish background details. For example, to start the session, I had someone read:

We’ve just been recently stationed out here on Cloud City in the Bespin system. I know, you’ve probably never heard of it, neither had I. It’s one of those fly-by-night corporate towns, mining Tibana gas out of the sky. Not sure you can even call that mining, it’s more like sucking. Can I say that on TV?

The local governor is kinda shady, 'cause the place is almost small enough to not be noticed. He’s not even enrolled in the Mining Guilds, and he owes a lot of back taxes and gambling debts. Anyhow, the citizenry aren’t too pleased with the way he’s running things, and there’s been some disturbances as a result.

That’s why we’ve been called in, to bolster the local police force.

Sometimes that ruffles a few feathers with the local big whigs, of course, but in the end everyone agrees quality of life improves once the Empire gets involved, and that’s what really matters. 

"Cloud City, Bespin, 7:00 am local-time" scrolled across the screen. Then the camerabot turned to another one of the TROOPS, who said (read from the telepromter, no doubt) this:

We’re responding to a call from the local Port Authority, seems they need a bit of help here.

There’s a ship that came in for repairs, had a malfunctioning hyperdrive or something, Put it in to dry dock at the local shop, and there’s some sort of animal problem. I’m guessing the owner left his pet on board, and forgot to tell the mechanics.

Normally, this sort of thing would be handled by Animal Control, not by the Emperor’s Finest, but apparently these here Gas Giant planets don’t have much in the way of wild life, so this town doesn’t actually have an Animal Control Guildhouse.

Looks like that fellow over there works here, we’ll start by asking him if he knows what kind of animal we’re looking for.

So the PCs enter the shipyard, where a pissed-off mechanic is bandaging his hand. He explains the owner of the ship has a real menagerie on board, some big fuzzy thing, a bunch of droids, and whatever it was that bit him. For a couple minutes I managed to imply it was Chewbacca that bit him, which was a total miscommunication red-herring. The players were wondering what the guy did that would provoke Chewie to attack, but had to proceed as the arrogant Imperial pigs they were.

The Imperials head over to the ship to check it out. One officer leans into the open hyperdrive port and bangs on it to scare out whatever the animal is, and ends up with a Mynock wrapped around his helmet.  There's a couple more in the engine block, and they start flying around.

It wasn't much a challenge for armed and armored troopers, but I broke out the Star Wars miniatures anyway and dipped our toes in a combat system none of us had used in a long time.. The first two Mynocks went down in the very first round, but the third one was surprisingly resilient. No one could get a decent damage roll on it, and a missed shot with a "1" on the wild-die left the NPC lying dead on the floor.

After the Mynocks were dealt with, the PCs put a "boot" on the Falcon's hyperdrive, broke one of it's tail-lights to justify a few extra tickets, and searched the holds. They confiscated the boxes full of money that Han was going to use to pay off Jabba. Aside from a little trouble with that little zappy ball that Luke used to practice his sabre work in the first film, the scene wrapped up without incident, and without the PCs ever meeting the main characters from the movies.

Next scene. One of the PCs reads:

This part of town has a bit of a reputation as a “red diode district”, if you know what I mean. That is to say, prostitution, mostly droid-related.

We’re just gonna do a little sweep through the neighborhood, mostly chase off the hookers and johns. Let them know the Empire is here now, and that sort of thing won’t be tolerated anymore.  They shouldn’t be out on the streets lookin’ for droid love, that’s what the Twi’Lek Dancing Girls Guild is for.

Of course, if any of the pimps, hos, or sexbots get uppity with us, we are authorized to use whatever force we deem necessary. That’ll send a message, loud and clear. To protect the decency and social welfare of the city, of course.

This lead to a small scene with an "obvious prostitute", I said as I placed a minature R4 astromech unit on the tabletop. When they eventually blasted the sexbot, it responded in the typical R2D2 method, rolling back, head spinning, and dozens of tools and attachments popping out of all the hidden compartments. So now the corridor is littered with vibrators. They question the other nearby bot,  PI-MP, who claims to know nothing about "that slutty little bitchbot".

"You want me to backhand her for you officer? I'm fluent in over 6 million forms of bitchslapping."

Surprisingly, PI-MP doesn't get blasted. He managed to convince them that he was innocent. Some random protocol droid came walking in at that moment, and PI-MP pointed at him. "Look, that's gotta be the pimp you're looking for officers. Look how much bling-bling he's made out of." So they let PI-MP go, and blasted poor C-3PO who just happened to wander in at the wrong time.

Meanwhile, the dirty little Ewok bounty hunter wasn't at all interested in cleaning up the prostitution of Cloud City. Since we were in a bad part of town, he went looking for other entertainment. Before long, he was involved in some illicit gambling with a bunch of Ugnaughts and Jawas, playing some high-stakes game called "Utini!" As their game wrapped up, his fellow little people said they were off to some big protest that was going on.

Which lead right into this scene:

There’s a lot of labor disputes going on lately. Not being affiliated with the Miner’s Guild, the local government is ill-equipped  to deal with it.

An informant told us that there was going to be some sort of protest going on, an attempt by the workers from “Deck Twelve an’ a Half” to unionize or something.

On the one hand you want everybody to be able to speak their mind and improve their lot in life, but at the same time... well, we all know that protests are often just the first step towards Rebellion and lawlessness. We’re gonna see if we can’t get them to disperse, kinda nip that in the bud before it gets too troublesome.

Ah, jeesh, look at all those little guys. They’re kinda cute. Hope we don’t have to disintegrate them. Set for stun.

I got out an actual map for this one, and set up a big cluster of ugnaughts, ewoks, jawas, and various short droids in a picket line. They were complaining about the working conditions on deck 12 & 1/2. Poor lighting, no safety railings, and the terribly low cielings. "First off, who are they trying to kid here? We all know deck '12 & 1/2' is really unlucky number 13. Secondly, why the low ceilings? Are they trying to say we're short? Just because we're not 2-meter tall freaks doesn't mean that some of us don't get claustrophobic! And what did Baron Calrissian do to 'improve' our lot in life? Longer coffee breaks and freakin' door to the brain of Moff Malkovich. I don't think even Moff Malkovich wants to see what happens inside Moff Malkovich's brain. I sure don't!"

Lucasfilm purists might complain about my bizarre choice to work in numerous references in this scene to Being John Malkovich. I know, it was silly, and doesn't quite fit in the Star Wars universe - not even the Expanded Universe. Just like the cameo by Tom Servo in the background in the TROOPS film, so I feel justified. And lets be honest, it's not like you would have been any happier if my references were to Willow or Howard the Duck, so cut me some slack.

The PC Imperial Officer starts making rolls of his command skill, threatening to blow up the protesters if they don't disperse. This gets rid of most of the crowd, except one little power droid who stands his ground shouting "Gonk no, we won't Go(nk)!" Time for some good old fashioned police brutality. The PC AT-ST Pilot chose to have her walker kick the Gonk Droid off the platform. She failed, with a dismal low roll and a spectacular "1" on the wild die.

So now the AT-ST scout walker is lying face-down on the terrain (a parked Imperial Shuttle on the platform, as a matter of fact) and the badly damaged Gonk droid is ominously whistling as if it's going to blow.

It ain't easy justifying this much SteamPork.

That's not nearly dire enough, so I chose that moment to have some of the other protesters return. Including several ugnaughts in a mecha war machine. I put my "Uggernaught" miniature on the table. I've been itching to use this mini in a scenario ever since I opened it in a booster of Star Wars minis a couple years back. Look at that thing, ain't it just ridiculously cool? Usually hard to justify, but this was no doubt the perfect game for it.

So now the PCs are pinned between the fire of a crazy ugnaught death machine, and the whistling overload of a malfunctioning power droid. Now that's drama!  :)

While most of the squad was pinned down, one of the Troopers did manage to use the cover of the buildings on the map to advance without incident and take out the rebel ugnaughts by means of a well-placed grenade. The whistling Gonk droid on the other hand was beyond their ability to multi-task, so most of the PCs took wounds from shrapnel damage that penalized their rolls the rest of the night.

The PC Imperial Officer went to fetch a change of uniforms, and came back with a new mission (and thus another of my short scripted monologues).

We’re responding to a possible domestic dispute. Neighbors called, said there’s a lot of yelling and the sounds of dishes shattering coming from one of the homes here.

I don’t expect too much trouble, though, as you can tell we’re in a nice part of the city. They’ve got a beautiful view of the bottomless shaft, there. That’s a doozy.

 If need be, we can take one or both of them down to the Detention Center till they sober up or calm down.

Dispatch says its the address is the home of one of the local city administrators, so chances are they’ll quickly calm down just to keep up appearances. These local government types are kinda slippery like that.

As it turned out, the home was that of Mr. and Mrs. Lobot. For those of you who don't recognize the name, Lobot was Lando's right-hand man on Cloud City. The bald guy with the computer sticking out of his head who follows Calrissian around, wordlessly directing lesser minions. He holds a position of importance, but he's very formal and not a particularly warm or communicative individual. So, it's no surprise that his marriage is a bit strained. Probably works late nights and weird back-room business deals with his shady boss in gambling dens and strip clubs. Who's to blame Mrs Lobot if she suspects her husband is secretly some sort of mob boss?

Lots of hysterics follow. The place has been trashed. She's in tears, crying and screaming, and he's standing there stoicly telling the troopers that everything is under control. Amidst all her sobbing, they eventually figure out she keeps repeating "it's on the balcony!" There the PCs find a severed hand. Mr Lobot swears he had nothing to do with it, that it must have fallen from somewhere further up the bottomless shaft. Mrs Lobot, however, is certain it's some sort of creepy mob signal, like waking up with the head of a Bantha in your bed.

While they're all out on the balcony trying to sort things out, the rest of a body falls past them. They look upward, and see this narrow promontory extending out to the middle of the chasm. There's someone else up on the damn thing, too, some black-clad Emo kid. Cut to narration:

We’re heading up a few levels, there’s a crisis situation, looks like a Jumper. It’ll be our job to talk him down.

We don’t get these suicide calls too often since most citizens of the Empire are so darned happy. You sure do see it more often out here on the Rim, though.

I remember a couple of planets back, there were these Jumpers just hanging from the ceiling! Hanging there. Wouldn’t come down. Stayed up there so long, they caught their death of cold.

Man, that place sure was chilly. C - O - L - D! You can ask my wife. On a frosty night,
laying in bed, I still say to her “Well at least I’m not back on Hoth!” I’ll remember that place for the rest of my life.

Hey, if you forgave a Being John Malkovich reference, I figure you won't mind me stealing a Bastogne line from Band of Brothers.

In the movie, after Luke throws himself off the ledge, Vader just heads back to his Star Destroyer like its no big deal. That of course is not what the PCs find when they get up there, though. No, I have a "fine tradition" in my TROOPS games that every session must end with a Drunken Darth. So Vader's out on the far end of this narrow ledge over a huge pit, all sad and depressed because his son just jumped. The Ewok bounty hunter walks out there to talk him back in. They end up sharing a few drinks - all those buttons and switches on Vader's chest plate are controls to his built-in minibar.

"I'm not a bad father, am I? I know I wasn't ever really there for him, but lots of people have workaholic absentee dads, right? That's no reason to shout 'you're not my father' and jump off a cliff, is it? I mean, it's not like he didn't know I exist, I left him with family after all. That's better than I had. You know what my mom told me? She said my daddy was a magic space virus!! You know what that does to a kid? Teaches him his mommies a damn liar, that's what it does! So at least I didn't lie to him like that..."

The Ewok tries talking him back in off the ledge, but without a lot of luck. In retrospect, I should have called for some sort of social roll to give him a shot at success, but it was a surprisingly complex scene and I was pretty deep in character, so I dropped the ball there. Not that I wasn't pleased with how it all turned out.

He's out there, waxing suicidally, and would rather down a six pack and a few bowls right here at the cliffs of doom than go back to work or blow off steam at some nightclub.

Someone suggests that the one female Stormtrooper in the squad try to coax him back to safety. She's rather reluctant, because the other time we played this, he made her be his date to his High School Reunion... and let's face it, Darth Vader is kind of a dick. Speaking of which, it's not long before she's ordered out on the ledge, pole-dancing on that vertical pipe or antennae or whatever the point of those weird bits on the bridge to nowhere are. This took a fairly difficult climbing & jumping roll, especially in the armor, but as it turns out she was up to the task.

As Vader is talking about what a great kid he had before he threw himself off the ledge, the PC Imperial Officer steps forward with their evidence baggie from the previous scene. "This son of yours, was this his by any chance?" he asks, handing Vader the severed hand.

I tell everyone that this is too much for Vader, and he feints. Everyone should roll initiative. I'll roll 3d6 for when Vader falls, only people who roll higher than him can act before he falls off the ledge. The first PC to act is also the only one who's too far away to do anything more than shout. The next two PCs try Brawling rolls to grab Vader, but fail and have to make a Dex check to keep from falling with him. The Ewok bounty hunter attaches a grappling hook to Vader, but there's some doubts as to how well a lone Ewok can belay the descent of a rather tall human in battle armor carrying a well-stocked wet bar. Yet another PC rushes out on to narrow promontory to try and grab him, and they also fail, this time with a "1" on the wild die.

Time for some final narration, this time improvised, by the GM:

There's a scraping metallic sound, and the camerabot pivots to see several bolts of the superstructure pop as the narrow platform buckles under the weight. With a sudden lurch, the entire promontory breaks loose and tumbles far down out of sight, taking Vader and the whole squad with it.
"TROOPS was filmed live in Cloud City." The theme music plays as the credits roll. "Bad Droids, Bad Droids, whatchyagonna do?"...

So I guess technically that's a TPK, but I've never seen a group quite that unanimously happy with a Total Party Kill before. TPKs don't usually get applause and laughter.